u^ 




til 




AN A-DDRESS 



DELIVERED BEPORE THE 



M¥ ENGLAND SOCIETY, 



m ANN ARBOR, MICK, 



OJf 



Fore - Fathers Day, 

DECEMBER 22, 1860, 

BY 

REV. AZARIAH ELDRIDGE, 

OF DETROIT. 



ANN ARBOR : 

ELIHU B. POND, PRINTER; 

1861. 



% 



'^ H ^^ 



HS 



W'>-'^ 






i CORRESPONDENCE. 



> Ann Aebor, Deo. 31, 1860, 

u> Ket. a. ELDRIDGE, 

Dear Sir : — A number of our citizens are desirous of circulating the 
very eloquent Address -whicb you delivered at the late anniversary of the 
New England Society. I therefore take this opportunity of requesting a 
copy for publication, 

Yours Respectfully, 

J. L. TAPPAN, Cor. Sec'y. 



Me. J. L. TA.PPAN, 

Dear Sir : — Your kind note of a recent date in respect to my Pilgrim 
Address at Ann Arbor has been duly received ; and enclosed herewith you 
will find a copy of the same. 

Yours, very truly, 

AZARIAH ELDRIDGE. 
January Snd, 1861. 



4pt» 



PILGEIM ADDRESS. 



He. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : 

IT IS pleasant and profitalble to look upon the past; and among 
by- gone experiences, no event is more important and interesting 
than the commencement of individual, or national existence. Our 
present stature, as a united people ; the wonderful run of success and 
■development, by which we have grown to this greatness and power, 
■help to render that small and forlorn beginning, on the bleak shore of 
New England, which we are now here to celebrate, peculiarly signifi- 
cant and attractiv3. Our minds and hearts arfi drawn to it, on the 
.seasonable reourrencft of tbpsfi -filial and patriotic festivities, as to a 
point where providence was planting and causing to germinate, among 
■rocks and sterility, a mighty plan to change the face of this Western 
Continent, and turn the destinies of the whole "World. There was 
no parade, pomp, nor circumstance about it ; and there seldom is, 
where great events are coming to pass. The nation was born, in those 
colonial scenes, as it were, in a manger ; and with as little demonstra- 
tion as when an acorn, pressed into the earth by a heedless tread among 
the trees, begins to take root ; or a rivulet, turned by some obstruc- 
tion, trickles at a, nfiw point, from tlift liillsirlo. 

But a singular interest, especially for those in the true line of de- 
scent, attaches to those remarkable men, and to their more remark- 
able work. Every incident, from the day they left Holland, or rather 
England, to the time the colony was recognized as a success, has a 
charm for us which is ever new. Who, that has Puritan blood in 
him, but loves to think and feel how calmly they endured reproach ; 
how nobly, gave up the comforts of home; how steadily, passed through 
the perils of the sea; how bravely, took hold of and mastered the diffi- 
culties of their new position, aad the problem they had undertaken 
to solve P 

/MM!* 



What an address was that, from the learned and saintly Kobin- 
Bon, to which they listened, on castmg off from the old world ! Was 
there ever such an occasion ! Ever such a body of men and women 
assembled ! Ever such words of wisdom and courage spoken by unin- 
spired man I In vain I search the pages of history and literature for 
the like. So tender, and yet firm ; so solemn, and cheering ; so 
well fitted to make heroes of the hearers, and martyrs, if need should 
be. How thoughtful and timely, that remarkable passage, to liberate 
the more rigid from undue bondage to dogma and the letter, 
wherein he said, so much in advance of his age, " And, if G-od reveal 
anything to you, by any other instrument of his, be as ready to receive 
it as ever you were to receive anything by my ministry ; for I am 
verily persuaded that the Lord has more truth yet to break out of 
his holy word." 

Dut at length they were ready, and upon the eve of final departure. 
Having finished their preliminary sojourn in Holland, and made 
preparation to sail, the Speedwell had started and returned, and her 
crew been some of them transferred to the May Flower, when, on the 
6th of September, this vessel of one hundred and eighty tons burthen 
finally sot eail from Dreft-Haven alone. The days had already begun 
to shorten; autumnal storms, to vim h tho Atlantic; and the voyage, 
proved a tempestuous one. In the wrenching of the ship one day, a 
strong timber threatened to break, "but a great iron screw was 
found," and the ship saved. While they were at sea one man died, 
whoso name was William Button ; and one child was born, to Mrs. 
Hopkins, which they named Oceanus. So that the number of one 
hundred and two, with which they put forth, was preserved until they 
came to land. 

On the 11th of November they cast anchor, within the sheltering 
arm of Capo Cod, wKi^li sftfimed to come down from the rocky inte- 
rior of New England, and extend itself far into the sea, to meet them 
and encircle them within its embrace. They were aiming to go far- 
ther south, and find the Hudson, if possible, but were oaught and 
detained by this out - reaching arm of . the old Bay State. Within 
what is now Provincetown harbor, they found themselves enclosed 
from the winds and waves of the Atlantic, in one of the finest road- 
steads known to the sons of the Ocean, This was on Saturday after- 
noon. Sixty -seven weary days had they passed in the ship.— 
On Sunday they rested, and on Monday, the IBth, they sent ashore six- 
teen men armed with musket, sword and corslet, and headed \>y Miles 



Slandisb. Very sandy, they found it, and Bterile. Few signs of life 
were discorercd until the fourth day, when they saw five or sis Indi- 
ans, with a dog; who ran away swiftly, and whistled the dog after them. 
This whistling of the dog, one historian thinks, must have done some- 
thing towards assuring the wanderers. They sent parties along the 
ghore, and into the woods, to explore. At length, on a plain, they 
came to what looked like a grave and *' musing what it might be," they 
resolved to examine, and found, under some mats, a bag, with a 
bow by it ; and not far off, a smaller bag, with a little bow. In the 
first, there was a quantity of fine red powder, together with the skull 
and bones of a man ; in the second, more of the powder, with the 
skull and bones of a child. Here then, was an Indian grave. In 
another, which was subsequently opened, there was a quantity of corn, 
in a little old basket ; and on digging further, they came to a fine 
large basket, full of fair corn, with thirty-six goodly ears at the top, 
which two of them could scarcely lift, but which they added to the 
common stock, promising, " so soon as we could meet any of the 
inhabitants of that place, to make ihem large satisfaction." 

So they spent a week or two, while their boat was repairing, and 
during that time, being compelled to wade much to and from the ship, 
some of them caught the " original of their death." Then, having 
ascertained that the point where they were was not the one at which 
to establish themselves permanently. Carver, Bradford, Winslow, 
ijtandish, and ten more started forth with the bbat, on an exploring 
trip, along the shore. They followed the coast round on the inside Of 
Cape Cod, for some seventy miles. It was very cold ; the sea broke 
over them repeatedly ; the water froze to their garments and " made 
them many times like coats of iron." At a certain point one of their 
party, who had gone up from the shore, soon ran back, crying, 
" Indians," and was followed by a flight of arrows. But Staudish 
was ready ; and returning the fire, which checked the savages, they 
again put to sea. Then a storm came on, with snow and hail ; the 
mast was carried away by the wind ; and they knew not which way 
to turn ; but at length, gained the land, and found it to be an island 
Clark's Island — secure from Indians. That was Saturday, again, and 
there they resolved to spend the Sabbath, which was their first one 
ashore, and they had such service as the circumstances would permit, 
with only 

A sereen of leafless branches 
Between them and the blast. 



8 

On Monday, the lltb, old style, the 22d, as we reckon it, of De-^ 
cembor, they sounded the harbor, near the mouth of ^vhieh tliey found 
themselves, and finding it good, they went over to a rock, on the 
shore of the main land, and stepping upon it from their boat, marched 
up from the water's edge. There were corn-fields before them. 
That rock was Plymouth Rock ! That Monday is what we now know 
and celebrate as Fore - Fathers Day ! 

The rest of their company were sent for, and came to them, with 
the ship. Soon the sound of axes, and saws, and hammers was heard. 
Their blows were heavy, their hearts were earnest, and their hands 
strong. The arrangement was for each man to build his own house. 
These were planted near together, in two parallel rows, for pur- 
poses of defence. So they toiled on, during the winter, without 
interruption from the natives, The latter were hostile, owing to the 
kidnapping enterprise of a slave trader named Hunt, but had been 
mostly swept away from the neighborhood of Plymouth, by a pesti- 
lence. Their ordinary labors were relieved, occasionally, by expe- 
ditions for hunting and fishing. 

I find on record the trying experience of two Pilgrims, who lost 
themselves while hunting, with a great female mastiff, and wandered 
about all night, " They heard in the night, as they thought, two liona 
roaring exceedingly for a long time together, and a third that they 
thought very near them. Not knowing what tu do, they resolved to 
climb up in a tree, as their safest refuge, though that would prove an 
intolerably cold lodging ; so they stood at the tree's root, that when the 
lions came they might take their opportunity of climbing up. The 
bitch they were fain to hold by the neck, for she would have been 
gone to the lion; but it pleased God so to dispose that the wild 
beasts came not, so they walked up and down under the tree all night; 
it was an exceedingly cold night." 

But those trials and perils, alas ! were not many "of them imaginary. 
When Spring came, death had been busy among them. The wife of 
Bradford was drowned in Province -town harbor, and, of the remain- 
ing one hundred and one, six died in December; eight, in January; 
seventeen, in February; and thirteen, in March. The women suffered 
most, as might be expected, but there Was no murmuring or complaint. 
Miles Standish, the warrior, was seen passing from house to house, 
an angel of tenderness and mercy. Quietly they suffered and died, as- 
in a holy cause; and the living suppressed their tears and sighs. The 
dead, they buried in the hillside, near ^e rook, and smoothed tho 



9 

graves away, and sowed them over with grass, that the Indiaps might 
not infer, by counting them, the weaknessof the colony, which kept at 
work as before. The summit of the ascent was graded, and a fortifica- 
tion begun there. It soon bristled with eannon, and beneath the 
platform which supported these, was the room in which they wor- 
ahiped God on Sunday, marching to it armed, and leaving their 
weapons stacked at the entrance. 

But at length Spring came, as I have said, after the long winter ; 
and it is on record how sweetly the singing of the birds sounded 
in their ears. There was also a pleasanter sound still came to 
some of thGin, one day in the middle of March, in the fine English 
word, " Welcome, Welcome," kindly, though imperfectly, uttered by 
a savage, who suddenly stood before them. It was Samoset. He told 
them of Hunt and the pestilence. In a few days he returned, with 
more savages, including Squanto, who had been one of those slaves 
and escaped. And so intercourse with the natives began. 

With fine weather, the time for planting arrived, and also, for the 
departure of the May Flower. This was a trying separation. The 
good ship, lying in the harbor, visited from time to time, was a com- 
forting feature of the scene, and seemed like a link of connection, if 
not a dernier means of escape, between them and the Father land. 
When that vessel was gone, the wide ocean would be before them, a 
continent of wild beasts and savages behind them, yet not one of them 
thought to return in her. Not a man, woman, or child, of those who 
had come to remain, went back to England in the May Flower. Her 
work was done in bringing them out. They had come to remain and 
establish themselves, and were not the people to abandon an enter- 
prise once undertaken. And yet the prospect was far from prom- 
ising, to an ordinary set of men, engaged in an ordinary expedition. 
The London Merchants, who had put in a small venture, were very 
much disheartened, but not so the Pilgrim Fathers themselves. They 
were not discouraged, when their first crop proved a short one. They 
did not think of being so, when the summer of the second year 
proved unpropitious ; nor when the ship Fortune came, bringing 
more men and no provisions ; nor even when an Indian messenger 
appeared among them, and, dropping a bundle of arrows tied up in 
a rattle -snake's skin, fled swiftly out of their village. It was a dec- 
laration of war, from Canonicut the chief of five thousand Narragan- 
set warriors. But Miles Standish took up the skin, filled it with 
powder and ball, and caused it to be sent back. And they calmly 



10 

waited the result. Not so calmly either, for hearing that Squanto, 
their man Friday, had been killed by a Narraganset Chief, ten men 
armed themselves, plunged into the forest, and surrounded the Chiefs 
cabin ; when they found thai Squanto was not dead, and so they came 
back. This, while they knew of the massacre at Jamestown, of four 
hundred whites in a single hour. But they were different men from 
those Virginia colonists, and went on prospering and victorious in 
spite of everything. 

At length, as time passed, they gave up the common stock prin- 
ciple. Bradford who had succeeded Carver, at his death, as Govern- 
or of the Colony, expressly says that it did not work well. Each 
man began to set up for himself, and they only paid in enough to 
support the officers and fishermen. After tliat, a new and larger di- 
vision of land took place, of twenty acres to the man. Then 
also, a division of the live stock, except some belonging to the town, 
according to the children and families of each ; and cattle, in those 
days, were used, not only for purposes of draught, but ridden as beasts 
of burden. We are told, for example, that " wlieu John Alden 
went to Cape Cod to marry Priscilla Mullens, he covered his bull 
with broad-cloth and rode upon his back :" and that " when he re- 
turned he placed his wife there, and led the bull home by the ring in 
his nose." He first went, you remember, according to the story 
which Longfellow has helped to render immortal, to plead for Pris- 
cilla, in behalf of his friend Miles Staudish, and being referred by 
her father, whom he first approached according to custom, if not to law 
— for they soon had a law, that any young man who did not do that, 
before he made advances to the girl herself, should be fined, or suffer 
corporal punishment — being referred to Priscilla, by her respected 
parent, Mr. Mullens, Alden argued so heartily for his friend Stan- 
dish, and had so pleasing a person aad so handsome a face, that, 
fixing her eyes on him, and then on the ground, she said, " Prythee, 
John, why do you not speak for yourself ?" Upon that hint he spoke, 
probably considering the old gentleman's permission covered this new 
aspect of the case, and so took her home as aforesaid ; which entire 
performance, Standish finally forgave him, in the version given by 
the poet, but for my own part, I very much doubt if he ever did. 

But years rolled on, another colony sprang up, at the north of them, 
under Roger Conant, the patriarch of Dorchester, and ancestor of our 
good old judge at Detroit, and whose cordial reception of John En- 
dieott, sent out from England to succeed him, caused them to name 



11 

the place near Boston where it occurred Salem. Then the Now 
Haven , colony began, in the year 1638, under Davenport and 
Pruden. And, about the same time, the Connecticut colony, with 
John Hooker and others at the head of it. Each one of these colonies 
came to adopt very much the same government for itself. Neither of 
them made any definite reference to any superior authority in Eng- 
land. In all four the freemen were the sole fountain of power. 
And who should he admitted to exercise the right of suffrage 
was decided, in the Massachusetts and New Haven colonies, by the 
male members of the church ; and in Plymouth and Connecticut col- 
onies, by all the freemen in mass meeting. 

At length, in Massachusetts, after justice had been administered 
for years, without any system of Statutes, or any recognition of the 
common law of England, but according to the principles of manifest 
equity, and to the law of Gon, which they would use, they said, 
until they had time to make better, a "body of liberties," so called, was 
prepared by Mr. Nathaniel Ward, and adopted in General Court. 
It consists of one hundred fundamental laws, and is a most wonderful 
production, to come from any one man of any age. Among the re- 
markable things about it, is its definition of treason, which is 
silent respecting all allegiance, on the part of the people, except to 
Massachusetts, and is so drawn as to threaten with death all who should 
take even the King's part against her. That was in 1631, when they 
had only been going alone about twenty years. How far back the 
spirit of independence dates in that State you can see. In Connecti- 
cut they adopted, the next year; almost a copy of the same instru- 
ment, being then, perhaps some four thousand persons strong. And 
when Cromwell came to power, while these colonists admired him, 
they carefully abstained from acknowledging his authority ; and when 
England made him Protector, they preserved a steady silence ; and 
when he died, the event is not so much as referred to in their public 
records. Yet Cromwell always liked and valued them. He allowed 
the navigation laws, which pressed hard upon the Southern Colonies, 
to become a dead letter, as against them. They received the com- 
modities of all nations free of duty, and sent their ships at will to the 
ports of continental Europe. And when he had conquered Ireland, 
and began to consider how to keep it in subjection and in order, he 
bethought him of these Puritans in New England, then some thirty 
thousand in number, and straightway sent over most liberal proposi- 
tions, if they would be removed in a body to Ireland. But they 
declined, in a most peculiar letter, which John Endicott wrot«, for 



12 

the General Court, promising not to binder any persons, or fami- 
lies, from going to any part of the world where God called them ; but 
on the whole, while very much obliged to him, they did not think 
they cared to change their abode. 

The Protector seems to have taken their pious and polite rebuff in 
good part, yet not to hare abandoned his idea of bringing their re- 
markable qualities into play, for the furtherance of his mighty enter- 
prises. When the Island of Jamaica was reduced by his fleet, and 
found to contain too small a number of white inhabitants, — only about 
fifteen hundred, — he thought of these Puritans again, and conceived 
the idea of giving it them, to possess and defend. Daniel Larkin, a 
colonist then in London, was sent back with a document proposing, 
liberal things, as to land rent, privilege, duties, &c ; only he, Cromwell, 
to name their Governor, and Commander of forces. What did they do 
with the communication? Waited eight months before it was read, 
and considered, by the General Court. Then a letter was ordered 
" to his Highness from this Court ;" which it took five months to 
draw up ; but which was very short, wordy and devotional ; thanking 
him, again, for his offer, and promising never to cease praying for His 
Highness, that the Lord would long continue him to carry on his 
work, overthrow the enemies of his truth, and to enlai-ge the kingdom 
of his dear Son. Here that matter ended, and with it I shall con- 
clude my enumeration of incidents illustrative of the character of 
our Forefathers. 

Take them, for all in all. we shall not look upon their like again. 

John Robinson, who is to be reckoned their leader, although like 
Moses, he never reached the promised land, would be a rare man in 
any age, or country ; learned, wise, polished and modest ; and of such 
scholarly tastes and acquirements, that the chief preachers of Leyden, 
chose him to defend their doctrines, at the University, against the 
Arminians, led on by the celebrated Episcopius, whom he is thought 
to have thoroughly defeated. 

William Brewster was a gentleman by birth, educated as a scholar 
at Cambridge, had lived in early life, — for he was older than most of 
the Pilgrims, — at the Court of Queen Elizabeth, and was the confi- 
dential friend and assistant of the renowned Davidson, when the lat- 
ter was her Secretary of State. 

John Carver was well educated, and possessed of a good estate, 
which he spent in the cause, and died shortly after being chosen first 
Governor of the Colony, 



William Bradford, his successor, was also a man of property and 
Tmark ; the master of several languages, German, French, ' Latin and 
Greek, and especially the Hebrew. He was familiar with literature 
and with general history. He had a large library for the time ; was 
no mean poet, when he chose to exercise his gifts in that direction, 
and few names come down to us associated with more of the distinc- 
tive attributes of a noble soul. 

Edward Winslow was a man of good family and education. Had 
traveled over Europe, moved among the gentlemen of the British 
Parliament, and on revisiting England, was commissioned to superin- 
tend the English fleet at the West Indies. 

These things, I mention to show, that those stern Forefathers of 
oura were not mere men of bone and muscle, on the one hand, nor 
wild, hot-headed fanatics on the other; but well bred, intelligent, 
conscientious persons, who had been accustomed to a diifereut expe- 
rience, and were making great sacrifices in what they did. 

Such was the work, the beginning of which we celebrate. These 
are some of the attending circumstances. These are the men, sifted 
from three Kingdoms, and bolted again by the return of the Speed- 
well, who planted themselves and their new idea, two hundred and 
forty years ago, on the edge of a then howling wilderness. 

But why, after all, do their names stand so high upon the pillar of 
human renown ? Is it solely the justice of mankind to the sterling 
virtues they cherished, and the heavy sacrifices they made, for free- 
dom to worship God ? Why so faithfully honored and applauded, 
the part they took, when so much good and true service has been for- 
gotten ? Because of its relation to providence. That was the turn* 
ing point. There the current changed in favor of civil and ecclesias- 
tical liberty. That was the scene, and they, the chosen instruments, 
for inaugurating a new era in religious and governmental affairs. 
There freedom of conscience began. There constitutional govern- 
ment first had a being in the annals of time. That compact framed 
and signed with forty one names, in the cabin of the May Flower, 
riding at anchor, by which they bound themselves before going on 
shore to be governed by each other as a body politic, and not the 
document penned by Thomas Jefferson, was the first Declaration of 
Independence. That "body of liberties" drawn up by Mr. Ward, and 
not the Constitution of the United States, was our earliest attempt, 
and the first one among mankind, at constitutional self government. 
Those deliberate answers; suggesting to Oliver Cromwell himself, the 



14 

idea of hands off, as to selecting Governors and Generals, and 
not the casting of taxed tea into Boston harbor, was the first in- 
dication in America of resistance to Kojal authority and will. 
What did it mean, when they declined to go to Ireland, and declined 
to go to Jamaica ? That they were free, and designed to remain so 1 
The spirit of freedom was already in them ! There the thing com- 
menced! There the tree of liberty began to grow. Its roots are en- 
twined about the bones of the Pilgrim Fathers in the old Bay State. 
With them it was, at the start, a religious sentiment. They sought 
Ireedom to worship God, which they knew belonged to them, and, in 
achieving it, freed themselves from civil domination, both in feeling, 
and for the time, in fact. So it was ordered to be. The great Disposer 
permitted and encouraged this result. Every providential advantage 
needful, and preventive necessary, to give their enterprise the right 
direction, and make it an advance in human history, was wonderfully 
supplied. The hand of the Lord was in it. This could only be done, 
the true character and quality imparted to the whole movement, and 
its consequences in this land and to the world only be secured, by 
such forefathers as thej were. Therefore, he raised them up and 
sent them. Therefore he kept them as they were, true to themselves, 
by preserving them from admixture, and guarding them from contam- 
ination. Cromwell had a purpose, and would have sent them where 
they soon had been spoiled. The Lord had a higher purpose, and 
kept them there, and what he wished them to be, by the bracing qual- 
ity of the climate, by the barrenness of the soil which he cleared of 
natives and guided them to, and by the rigor of those habits which 
expelled the worthless and troublesome, and repelled gay and fashiona- 
able adventurers. When the London Merchants, desirous of large 
returns for the little money invested, sent men to change all this to 
overrule these Fathers of a strong, orderly and well - educated Chris- 
tian nation, and transform the colony into a company of enterprising, 
fur - traders; how quickly was the plan set aside, in the good provi- 
dence of God, and did things go on as before in the way preordained 
for them ! 

It is from this view of the case, wherein the mind of God concern- 
ing these friends and their early work comes to light, that we may 
derive assurance of hope for the country. Too much interest has 
been betrayed from the first, too many blessings have all along been 
invested in this national enterprise, by Him who sees the end from 
the beginning, for it to be abandoned now ! The position we occupy, 



^ \J \J \ -^ -t 

15 

on the surfaoe of the earth, with heathen Africa on one side, and 
heathen China and India on the other, has been too wisely selected ; 
the incipient stages of our existence, as a people, too carefully watched 
over ; the strides of progress, too rapid and regular, for nothing to 
come of it ! God does not so work. I feel in regard to the ruin of 
this country, as I do when they tell of the second advent of Christ, 
and the destruction of the world, that it is too early yet. The world 
was four thousand years in preparing for him, and the gospel has been 
presented as yet to only one eighth of the people. So this country 
has just begun to be what it has so long been preparing for. It is now 
just beginning to enter on the high career, which He has marked out 
for it far — far into the future ; and it is altogether too early to talk 
of dissolution and decay. Do nations die in mid - career, rsa man is 
smitten down in middle life? Do nations come apart, and when the 
dew of youth is still upon them ? Never. Will he who has blessed 
and favored no other one, since the birth of time, so lavishly, now suffer 
this nation to come to any serious harm, by a junto of selSsh men, 
scheming for a confederacy in which South Carolina may be the ban- 
ner State, and Charleston the great Metropolis? Never. Never. 
They can't make me believe it, by their threatening, but harmless, 
ordinances. They can't make me believe it, by their crocodile tears 
and sighs, or proposals from whatever quarter, to humble ourselves 
before God, with fasting and prayer that He may prevent such a 
calamity. He has no idea of bringing it upon us, or of suffering it 
to be done. There is no occasion to fear any such thing, but abun- 
dant occasion for thanksgiving and praise, that He has bestowed 
upon us such blessings, together with the power to retain them 
that He is granting us such rewards of industry, and such returns 
from the soil, as the world has never seen ; that there has been no 
time, since the Fathers landed on Plymouth Kock, when we were 
any thing like so strong as now, as against foreign aggression, or the 
elements of internal trouble. But let us not abuse our power Let 
us not think to tyrannize over any portion of our fellow countrymen, 
and interfere with their peculiar institutions. Let us bear and for- 
bear, as the worthy sous of calm, firm, clear headed, strong willed, 
conscientious sires, in whom a Cromwell at the head of England found 
his match. And when we do pray, as all often should, upon this 
subject; let it be that the God of our Fathers, may still be the God 
of their children, to the latest generation ; and that He may lead us 
and them into the adoption of all private virtues and public measures 
which will lift the country higher and higher as a model of successful 
and glorious Bepublieanism. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



014 069 172 



OFFICERS OF THE SOCfETY FOR 1861. 



ENOCH JAMES, President. 

Vice Presidents, 
GEORGE D. HILL, JOHN M. WHEELER, 

SOLOMON MANN, 0. B. COOK, 

GEORGE DANFORTH. 

RANSOM S. SMITH, Eec. Sec'y. 
JOHN L. TAPPAN, Cor. Sechj. 
WILLIAM N. STRONG, Treasurer. 

Executive Committee, 

LUTHER DODGE, EEENEZER WELLS, 

CHAUNCEY H. MILLEN. 



